This resource is based on the discussion that Kerry Trabinger moderated on the community between 15 - 26 March 2004.

During the event particpants mostly discussed these three topics:

• What makes a good online teacher?
• How to be a good online teacher:
• How can a teacher effectively allocate time when teaching an online course?

What makes a good online teacher?
The group come up with the following suggestions:

A good online teacher is able to manage:

• induction of new learners
  
• email
  
• asynchronous and synchronous discussions
  
• online assessment
  
• technology
  
• knowing when to speak and when to be silent,

They're able to

• respond appropriately without body language cues, even voice
  
• build a collective learning "atmosphere"
  
• develop a sense of community

Online teachers need

• expert/content knowledge
  
• familiarity with the LMS
  
• empathy for the students as they work through the process.

Another person suggested there is actually nothing special about good online teaching, saying that good teachers in whatever medium use the tools available to them and fit them to their students and context. Attitude is more important than anything.

How to be a good online teacher?

• Find a mentor
  
• Study online before teaching online
  
• The capabilities needed to plan, develop, facilitate and evaluate flexible and online learning should be core components of teacher education programs.
  
• An important first step seems be socialisation (as identified by Gilly Salmon) in the online environment, to take the fear out of engagement.
  
• Have a face to face session. Personal contact is still important.
  
• Many good teachers regress (temporarily) in terms of their teaching skill until the online repertoire of skills, processes, models and understandings are internalised.

How can a teacher effectively allocate time when teaching an online course?
Time management can be a huge problem for online teachers. Here are some suggested solutions:

• My workload reduced considerably when teaching the same course for a second time (one trick I use is 'cut and pastes').
  
• I will often make a general posting to reply to a number of students comments.
  
• Allocate specific days for uploading materials and for teachers to reply to students.
  
• The traditional TAFE 4 semester model is not the best model to follow when delivering flexibly.
  
• One person said their university had run a course with continuous enrolment dates and it didn’t cause a problem for staff. But it did for completions. Open-ended enrolments often lead to open-ended completions (ie not completing!).
  
• One person said they asked students to submit at least half of their assignments by week 10 (not all at the end!)
  
• One person felt that much of the facilitation and admin needs to be done by staff other than the teacher.
  
• Teachers have for many years, been getting more and more involved with duties that are outside of their "core business”.
  
• Discourage students from using email, unless their questions/requests are of a personal nature. Get them to post to the forum instead.
  
• Set out clearly in the orientation/enrolment phase of an online course what the expectations are - of students and of the facilitator. Eg turn around time for assignments, answering emails etc.
  
• I think we also need to allocate bunches of hours for a course delivery and let the facilitator manage these as needed.
  
• Have a learning design that staggers the workflow.
  
• We should employ more admin staff to complete the 'paper trail' to leave our trained teachers to do what they are best at and that is to 'educate the future of Australia'.
  
• It can take more hours to teach online than face to face.
  
• Check out: Young, J.R. "The 24-Hour Professor - Online teaching redefines faculty members' schedules, duties, and relationships with students." The Chronicle of Higher Education, May, 31, 2002. available online at
  http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i38/38a03101.htm
  or
  Gilly Salmon’s “Jane” in her 'E-Moderating' book (2000 p4)

Contributors:
Chris Ainsworth, Scot Aldred, Janine Bowes, Andrew Bowman, Claire Brooks, Marty Cielens, Alison Cutler, Kate Fannon, Janet Harris, Janelle Hollis, Louise Housden, Carole McCulloch, Claude Pogliani, Peter Robertson, Ginette Smith, John Smith, Joyce Smith, Bronwyn Stuckey, Kerry Trabinger

Kerry's original presentation/discussion starter:

How I got into Flexible Learning...
I first approached the base of the Online Mountain while I was studying a Certificate IV in Tertiary Education and Training. Due to childcare commitments I was unable to continue studying face to face. One subject was offered flexibly and I embraced the ability to study from home. A few years later while studying a Master of Professional Education and Training I took my first steps up the mountain when I was able to complete two units online. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to work at my own pace, in my own time, wherever and whenever I wanted to study (often I began at 9.30 pm when my children were in bed!).

I really made headway up the slope when I was employed as a Qantas College Online Tutor from 1999 – 2003. I taught Qantas staff, who were based all over the world and included staff from many facets of the company including pilots to baggage handlers. These students all studied completely online with no face to face contact with either myself or each other. However, these students were able to connect with lively interactions via the discussion boards.

I climbed even higher when my passion and enthusiasm for online delivery grew after completing a WebCT designer course where I began designing online subjects for the Tourism Department. I continued to climb in Semester 2 2003 when I assisted in the designing of new online courses in our other faculty departments including Butchery and Beauty Studies. I believe I almost reached the summit late last year while facilitating a successful Learnscope team.

The view from where I am now
I feel I have almost reached the summit, however I am roped to my colleagues and they are below still making their way slowly up the slope. I am pulling them up and impatient for them to reach me so they can see the view from where I am standing.

I feel incredibly lucky that I have had this steep climb up the online mountain. My first experience with online delivery was to deliver completely online very successfully and therefore I know this mode of delivery is very effective.

I believe that I climbed the mountain using a straight path up whereas many other VET practitioners are taking their time and travelling on a much slower, level, safer path snaking slowing up and around the mountain.

A year ago I found it difficult to direct our teachers to this path. In fact I found it difficult to even bring the teachers to the base of the mountain and look up. We only had a few teachers interested in trying online delivery. However, over the past six months many teachers have decided to join the climb. This semester we have ten teachers delivering online for the first time.

Reaching the summit (organisational change)

'Access to and the ability to effectively use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to obtain information and services are becoming increasingly important skills necessary to fully participate in contemporary Australian economic, political and social life'.
'e-Learning: Emerging Issues and Key Trends - a discussion paper produced by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework' (p23)

I like quoting this to our teachers who are hesitate to begin the climb. This quote to me is reflective of why the move to online delivery is so important for VET. Industry has requested that on completing a course, our students be familiar with online learning and online research. In Tourism for example most companies now ‘sell’ their products to travel agents not via the traditional face to face sales representative but rather in the form of an online course. One example is Warner Brothers who have developed a course called ‘Scooby dooploma’. This is an industry recognised course which travel agents complete online. Our students on completing the Travel Course must have the skills to be able to learn via this medium. We are also finding the demand for online subjects is increasing from our students. Particularly after the successfull completion of one online subject, students are keen to study more subjects using this delivery method. I can see this demand increasing in the future as the ‘playstation’ generation moves into the VET sector.

Our challenge over the next year is to ensure a smooth transaction for our teachers in the move from face to face delivery to online delivery. I am a firm believer that to be a good online teacher you must have first experienced being an online student. All our online teachers participate in online teacher training ‘online’. I also feel it is important that our online teachers have adequate information including hints on how to teach online.

The Faculty also believes that it is important to have a first face to face online induction session for our students to start the course feeling confident in their ability to study online. In this first induction session, we make sure the students password and logins are all working, we show them how to navigate WebCT including the look and feel of the course, how to send and read an email etc. We have found it vital that our online teachers are enthusiastic about online delivery in this first session. If this session is delivered well then the students go away highly motivated to study online.

We are also looking at the issue of online teacher’s workload. In face to face delivery the teacher allocates a block of time on a certain day. In online delivery this may vary each week For example we have found in many courses the first few weeks and the final weeks of a course are very time consuming whereas in the middle of the course a teacher may only require as little as fifteen minutes a week. This is very difficult for a teacher trying to plan their workload weekly let alone for an entire semester. We have also found feedback to the students must be timely or there will be a high rate of incompletions. We have found our teachers need to acknowledge a students email within a few days. Therefore a teacher must allocate time spread out over a number of days rather than a few hours on one day.

All of these issues if not handled correctly have the ability to either ensure the success or failure of our online subjects. For this reason we are keen to share with other VET practitioners their experiences with these issues.

Kerry Trabinger
Canberra Institute of Technology